


Dissolution of a Dreadful Dynasty

by Mighty_Ant



Category: Count Duckula
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Duckula's Family, Human/Vampire Relationship, Like attempted eating of main characters, M/M, Mutual Pining, Vampires doing vampire things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:15:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22935418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mighty_Ant/pseuds/Mighty_Ant
Summary: In the span of a single morning, Otto Von Goosewing becomes the greatest vampire hunter in history.
Relationships: Count Duckula/Dr. Von Goosewing
Comments: 8
Kudos: 93





	Dissolution of a Dreadful Dynasty

Goosewing’s life is one marked by violence. 

He’s raised by his uncles and grandfather after the tragic death of parents he never knew (vampire attack, he’ll grow up hearing. They ran a red light and were T-Boned by a semi, he’ll later learn). They’re Von Goosewing vampire hunters through and through, eating, sleeping, and breathing the hunt. He has no choice but to follow in their footsteps. 

By the time he can walk, he understands that there is nothing in this world worse than a vampire. 

_ Vampires are soulless, Otto,  _ his family tells him every morning, noon and night,  _ Vampires are evil.  _ His bedtime stories are long and bloody tales of Von Goosewings who failed in their sacred quest and fell prey to the monsters they hunted. 

He’s eight years old when one of his uncles places a stake-shooting pistol in his hand and tells him to aim at the practice dummy two dozen feet away that is shaped far too much like a person. 

_ You can never hesitate, Otto,  _ they say, steadying his shaking grip.  _ A vampire hunter who hesitates is a dead vampire hunter. You must stop at nothing to kill a vampire because they will stop at nothing to kill you.  _

When he’s ten, they send him to the woods behind Von Goosewing Estate to practice on live targets. He is given strict instructions not to return until completion of a successful hunt. To protect him from the elements he is given a blanket and a stake-shooting rifle. 

_ Vampire hunting will test your limits, Otto. You must outpace the creature, outsmart them, be ready to slay them at a moment’s notice.  _

He does his best to make a lean-to and build a pitiful fire, but it rains for two days straight and he quickly goes through the ham and bread he smuggled with him. Day and night, the woods are plunged into utter blackness and frigid cold as the storm rages. 

On the third day, the weather finally clears. He awakens to a gleaming green forest, sunlight shimmering through the canopy reflecting off the dew beaded on grass and leaves glitter like the crystals on a chandelier. He hears movement in the bushes and hunkers behind a fallen, mossy log. His exhausted mind plays tricks on him, conjuring all sorts of fearful beasts that could be lying in wait. Vampires who will suck his soul out through his neck, werewolves that will tear him limb from limb, demons and witches and horrors unimaginable. 

A deer steps into the clearing, with antlers tall and grand and tread almost silent. 

He stares at it through his rifle’s scope, his finger twitching on the trigger. The deer will be his first kill, and watching the light go out of its eyes will prepare him for a lifetime of snuffing out the hellfire in vampires’ eyes. 

Then, he makes a rookie mistake; his elbow slips on the mossy log and the muzzle of his rifle lands in the bushes. The deer immediately turns toward the sound. 

He freezes under its stare as its watery black eyes bore twin holes into his face. The moment stretches like a thread on the brink of snapping, and he sees the deer’s sides expand and contract with its breaths, sees its twitching, swiveling ears, and the way it blinks its large, wet eyes. He has never seen a live deer before. He never could have expected it to look so....alive. 

He fears that vampires may look just as alive. 

His rifle sits heavily in his young arms, and it takes less effort to lower than raise it again to take aim. Despite all of his training, he lets the deer go free. 

Next time he won’t be so lucky. Nor the time after that. But in this sunny clearing, he watches the deer dash away, vanishing deeper in the forest. 

So his first hunt ends in unequivocal failure. His uncles find him on the fourth day lying unconscious from exhaustion and hunger and for nearly a week he’s bedridden with a searing fever. Once he can sit up without fainting his lessons resume in earnest. 

His uncles accompany him on his next hunts, and each time they make him fire on whatever deer or fox or pheasant has the misfortune of crossing their path. They make him practice with a real hammer and stake because sometimes it won’t be possible to make a kill from afar; it will have to be close, and he will have to look his enemy in the eye before he turns them to dust. 

They tell him to carry a silver cross in his coat pocket because the next person you meet might be an enemy in disguise. They tell him to pour a drop of holy water into the drink of anyone he dines with, whether they be friend or lover, because one can never know if they have been turned. They tell him to trust no one and they tell him that a vampire hunter is all he will ever be. 

Over time, his hands develop a permanent tremor. Anxiety leaves him fidgety and unfocused during the day and plagued by nightmares, unable to sleep, at night. He sees vampires lurking in every darkened corner, fears for his safety even in broad daylight. 

His life’s one reprieve comes in the form of his radio shorting out one morning. It is his one window to the outside world, to music and voices other than that of his grandfather and uncles. It’s out of desperation that he takes it apart and not only does he learn what’s wrong with it, but that he also knows how to put it back together. 

In between training and legends about bloodthirsty vampires his living family never faced, he invents and he plots out and he plans, and he survives to one day face the monsters he grows up fearing. 

  
  
  


For centuries, Count Duckula has slain Von Goosewings and Von Goosewings have slain Count Duckula. 

The scourge of Transylvannia, Duckula returns sometimes for centuries at a time until a Von Goosewing clever enough and strong enough finally drives a stake through his heart. And then they must do the entire thing over again a century later. 

For years, the darkly looming pile that is Castle Duckula has sat quiet and seemingly empty, high up in the desolate mountains. Lying in wait. Until now. 

Goosewing, once a boy afraid of his own shadow, is decades older now and does not fear that which isn’t there. Only a few of his aging uncles remain, looking down on him from their comfortable perches in the Von Goosewing estate. He lives in the airship he built with his own two hands, inventing new vampire-killing devices and journeying to the site of his family’s bane because that is what’s expected of him. 

He finds Castle Duckula a sprawling mess of stone and wood, uneven spires and headless gargoyles. It is a place of decay and disrepair, as though it has gone neglected from the moment of its construction. Inside is no different. Towering ceilings with water damage and crumbling moulding. There are cobwebs in every corner, cracks in the walls, and holes in the floor. Every footstep echoes and the air smells of rotting wood. The castle is like an excavated tomb, housing something dead that should have stayed buried. 

Sounds bounce strangely off the walls, and for a moment Goosewing believes he’s being followed. He ducks out onto a balcony, closing the doors behind him. Stepping into sunlight is as startling as a slap to the face, and the rush of cold, crisp air fills his lungs where age and dust had clogged them. 

The castle is so obscenely big, with hallways that twist and turn and deadend, that Goosewing knows he has no hope of finding Duckula today. But reconnaissance will be useful for the future, so he readies his rifle and prepares to reenter the belly of the beast. 

Above and to the right of him, the doors to an upstairs balcony are opened. Perplexed, and wondering which of Duckula’s minions could be enjoying the sunlight, Goosewing crouches beside the railing to observe. 

The duck that steps out is short and green-feathered, with lanky black hair. He’s wearing a rumpled suit and tie beneath a black cape. 

For a moment, Goosewing cannot believe his eyes. It’s the middle of the day, the sun gleaming high above them. The duck before him can’t possibly be who he thinks it is. But Goosewing has seen images of Ducklas past, caught glimpses of dust-caked portraits lining the hallways in his prowl through the castle. 

Improbably, impossibly, it is Count Duckula who is leaning against the balcony railing, raising his head to bask in the sun. 

Goosewing’s grip tightens on his rifle, and he rises steadily from his crouch. Through some odd stroke of luck or act of God, he has been given the perfect opportunity to rid the world of a blood-sucking monster for the next century. It is a chance he cannot afford to pass up. 

He’s lifting the scope to his eye when he hears Duckula sigh. Goosewing looks over the muzzle of his rifle as Duckula drops his head into his hands, mussing his hair even more than before. As he leans against the railing, his shoulders drop as though under some great weight. He remains that way for several long moments. 

For the first time, doubt buries its insidious claws in Goosewing’s stomach. This duck is not what he imagined a vampire to look like. There are no dripping fangs, no burning red eyes. He isn’t brimming with malice and cool intimidation. He isn’t turning to dust in the sunlight. 

He still hasn't noticed Goosewing. It would be the work of seconds to undo a life for a century, all Goosewing has to do is aim and pull the trigger. 

But his worst nightmare has been made reality. The vampire looks just as alive as he feared. 

A voice warbles out of the doorway above him, female and sing-song. “Master Duckula! Now where have you gotten to, silly?”

Count Duckula raises his head, steeling himself with a deep inhale. “I’m out here, Nanny,” he replies. His voice is reedy and almost utterly normal, not at all what Goosewing imagined a vampire would sound like. 

He throws a final look at the sunlit expanse before he turns and follows the voice back inside the castle. Goosewing watches him go, his fingers going numb from gripping his rifle too tightly. 

  
  
  


After his initial failure, Goosewing becomes determined to prove that Duckula is the monster he was always made out to be. 

He attacks Duckula incessantly, follows him to whatever far-flung country he’s transported his castle to, shoving newer, flashier inventions in his face (and then his trusty stake-shooting rifle, when those inventions invariably backfire on him). He tries pushing Duckula to his limit, to get him to drop the act of ‘vegetarian vampire’ he insists on clinging to. 

Vampires are evil; that’s all Goosewing knows, all he was raised to believe. If he accepts that Duckula is the exception to the rule, then do the rules even matter anymore? 

So he vows to hound Duckula to the ends of the earth until he reveals himself to be the monster Goosewing knows him to be. Then, and only then, will Goosewing be able to slay him. It shames him, but he knows that he wouldn’t be capable of stomaching anything less. 

But Duckula only ever seems mildly annoyed by the constant attempts on his life. At worst, he asks Nanny to throw him out of the castle, “ _ Gently _ , Nanny,  _ gently _ !” and always holds Igor back when he advances on Goosewing with an unnerving gleam in his eye. 

He constantly tricks Goosewing with disguises, getting him alone, getting him to lower his defenses, but doesn’t make a single attempt on his life. It isn’t as though Goosewing isn’t wholly fooled each time; Duckula comes to him as a blonde haired maiden, awkward and shy, and as a fellow vampire hunter, a companion and confidante. He has dozens of opportunities to do Goosewing harm, but never acts on them. 

That terrifies Goosewing. 

He lives in fear of Duckula biding his time, waiting for the moment to strike when Goosewing least expects it, when it will hurt the most. Because despite Goosewing’s best intentions, he begins to look forward to his weekly infiltration of Castle Duckula. His nightmares about being swallowed into the castle’s caping maw, of fangs dripping with blood and a green, clawed hand reaching into his chest to rip out his heart, begin to fade. Instead, he dreams of a green hand holding his, gentle touches in the night, a warm presence filling the emptiness of his airship, his bed, his life. 

It isn’t the first time he’s awoken with the phantom sensation of Duckula’s arms around him, but as he jerks to consciousness at his cluttered worktable, it is the first time that the reality of his gaping loneliness nearly brings him to tears. Goosewing can think of only one thing to remedy this, and he storms the castle at once. 

He finds Duckula reading in one of the libraries with the least amount of decay. Blues plays softly from a record player in a corner. 

Goosewing brings his rifle to bear and fires at Duckula. His aim isn’t to injure; he knocks the book out of Duckula’s hands. Duckula nearly falls out of his seat with a startled yelp. 

“What the— _ Goosewing _ ?”

“You cannot hide from me, Duckula!” he snaps, as he always does. He knows his threats by rote. “No matter where you go, I, Dr. Von Goosewing, will always find you!”

“Who’s hiding?” Duckula retorts. “This is my castle!” 

Goosewing moves to fire another warning shot at Duckula’s feet, but in a blink Duckula is standing in front of him. He so rarely uses his vampiric abilities that Goosewing sometimes forgets they exist. 

Duckula grabs Goosweing’s rifle, turning it on its side as they grapple over it. 

“You won’t fool me!” Goosewing snaps, and he’s desperate now, more desperate than he can ever remember feeling. “I know what you are and what you will always be: a blood-sucking vampire! As a vampire-hunter, it is mein duty to slay you.”

Duckula shoves him, hard, and pins Goosewing against the nearest bookshelf with the flat side of his rifle. Their hands brush on opposite sides. 

“Who are you trying to convince?” Duckula demands. Normally theatrical in his anger, he’s deadly serious now. “Me? Or you?” 

Their beaks are inches apart. Duckula is shorter than him, not quite at eye level, and it would be the work of mere seconds to lower his head and kiss him. Goosewing is frightened by how much he wants to. 

“I…” he says, uselessly. Incapable of drawing breath, he finds there’s no air in the space between their beaks. 

Goosewing pushes Duckula away from him, dropping his rifle in the process. Not bothering to retrieve it, he rushes out of the library and feels Duckula’s gaze follow him out. 

  
  
  
  


He avoids Castle Duckula for a month. Instead, he busies himself with menial tasks. He builds a new stake-shooting rifle, runs maintenance on his airship that has been sorely lacking and watches terrible television as he takes apart and puts back together everything from the engine to the coffee maker. 

During the last week of his self-imposed exile, he plays the recordings gathered from the listening devices he’s left scattered in Castle Duckula over the years. 

When there isn’t silence, much of it is just Nanny singing terribly, and loudly, sometimes for hours. It’s the price he pays for leaving one of his bugs in the breadbox. However, other times it’s Igor’s droning baritone he hears, often in conversation with Duckula. He can never listen for long when Duckula begins speaking, sounding perfectly wry, exasperated, himself. 

But near the end of his month-long isolation, Goosewing picks up mention of a family reunion and he starts listening in earnest. 

A year ago, Duckula came to him disguised as a vampire hunter, talking at length about a great gathering of vampires at Castle Duckula. When the hat and wig came off, all Goosewing had been able to see was the deception. Now, Goosewing sees the desperation. 

A year ago, during the last reunion, more people disappeared from the village in a week than had in all the years the 17th Duckula had been in residence

Duckula had wanted Goosewing’s help to kill his family because they’re vampires in the truest sense of the word (and Duckula  _ isn’t _ , as Goosewing knew, deep,deep down, ever since he watched him step into the sunlight). 

It is almost disconcerting how easy it becomes then to don his cloak and direct his airship back to Castle Duckula. He tells himself that it is the opportunity to cement his name in the annals of vampire hunter history that emboldens him so, to become one of the great, tragic, and bloody heroes he grew up hearing about. But that would be a lie. The Von Goosewing line ends with him and his little niece back in Munich, who perhaps isn’t so little anymore. 

He would never admit it aloud, but maybe he races back to Transylvania with fear in his heart for the sake of one whose tired red eyes haunt his dreams and waking days. 

At the speed he pushes her, his airship’s engine would not have held out had he not done those repairs during his isolation. He manages to arrive at Castle Duckula only a little before dawn and wastes no time in sneaking inside though one of his many hidden entrances. 

The castle is as gloomy and empty as every other time he’s visited, but this time the silence feels heavy, like the pregnant pause during a prisoner’s walk to the gallows. He’s utterly alone as he creeps down the hall, but his feathers stand on end as a breeze washes over him like quiet whispers. Across his back he’s slung his rifle and stakes line his belt. In his clammy hands, he clutches a pistol. Though he’s encountered no one, it doesn’t feel like enough protection. 

It’s only as he approaches a sitting room on the third floor that he begins to hear voices. A woman laughs, long and shrill, and the sound of clinking glasses accompanies the murmur of conversation. He stops at the corner, straining his ears to catch the sound of one voice above all others. After waiting for several seconds, he hears Duckula’s nervous, stilted laughter and the breath returns to his lungs. 

Goosewing thumbs the safety off his pistol and takes a step forward. 

Without warning, he shudders with the sensation of being watched. There’s a presence at his back, but it is as though his feet have been nailed to the ground and as hard as he tries he cannot turn around. He can’t even move his head. A finger cold as death reaches over his collar and traces over the back of his neck, nearly making him gag. 

“And here I thought we’d have to travel all the way to the village for a decent meal,” a voice says pleasantly, just behind his ear. 

Red eyes in a pallid, sunken blue face fill his vision, and Goosewing knows no more. 

  
  
  
  


He awakens as though surfacing from a great depth. 

Color and sound blend together in a cacophonous, indecipherable mess before his eyes, and he blinks sluggishly as shadows dance to and fro in his peripheral vision. A headache pounds dully at the back of his eyes, making it difficult to focus. Faraway voices gain volume piecemeal and their words begin to gain meaning to his lethargic mind. 

“....out on us, lad….”

“....Igor says he comes ‘round every…”

“....your own hunter! You are your father’s reincarnation aren’t…”

The world springs to sharp focus like a rubber band snapping back into place. 

Goosewing finds that his view is one of the ceiling, the paint so warped with age that it is impossible to determine its original color. He realizes this because he is lying flat on his back atop a table that makes the base of his spine ache. He is unable to sit up, or move his limbs at all because his arms and legs have been spread out and bound with rope to the table legs. 

There are no less than twelve creatures standing over him. Conversation flows around him in eager bursts, the speakers’ accents rich and cultured. Candelabras throw macabre shadows over the ceiling. 

His headache sharpens to a roar, and his vision tunnels as he begins to hyperventilate. 

“Ah,” someone says, and a face peers down at him from the teeming mass that surrounds him. “It seems our guest of honor is finally awake.”

The bird’s red eyes burn brightly in a pale blue face. Goosewing flinches away from him as well as he’s able, his tongue thick and sandpaper dry in his beak. The vampire laughs. “He remembers me. How sweet.” He steps back and the candle light flickers off the array of medals pinned on his coat and the decorative sword at his waist. “Vlad Duckula, my good man! I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Dr. Von Goosewing.”

“Not one of the Von Goosewing vampire hunters!” a woman in red titters at the end of the table, making Goosewing jump, limbs straining painfully at the ropes. On either side of her, two more vampires laugh. 

“Just the same,” replies a portly duck on Goosewing’s right side. “In fact, I believe I drained your great-great grandfather back in 1870. Left a bit of a mess if I recall. Hardy lot, aren’t you?”

“He looks rather common,” says a crane with a severe expression, peering down her beak at Goosewing. “Perhaps O-positive?”

“Please,” Vlad says, and Goosewing’s panicked gaze bounces back to him. “Might we not allow the Count to have the last word with his hunter? And come now, Mildred, the man is clearly an A-positive.”

There’s movement out of the corner of his eye as Vlad ushers someone forward. 

“Come now, lad, no need to be shy,” he says. “Igor tells us that this nuisance has hounded you for years and you simply couldn’t be bothered to drain him. I hope you don’t mind that we took the liberty.”

Goosewing turns his head to the left and meets Duckula’s horrified expression.

Vlad claps a hand on his shoulder, and Duckula's knees seem to buckle. “No last words? Aye, I’m sure you’re glad to be rid of this one, aren’t you?”

Duckula swallows, his throat bobbing harshly. “Y-yeah, sure am. S-super glad, that’s me.” He doesn’t look away from Goosewing for an instant, and Goosewing couldn’t hope to tear his gaze away. 

“Right then, let’s get on with it,” Vlad says. “Naturally, you can have first go at him, Count. Be sure not to finish him off before we can all get a taste!” 

This is everything Goosewing wanted, everything he feared, brought to reality. Duckula, with his vampire legacy looming over him, will become the monster Goosewing made himself believe he already was. It’s a betrayal Goosewing always told himself was coming, but the pain it triggers in his chest is searing. Against his will, he trembles against his bonds. 

Duckula steps forward. “Right, right,” he says, “just, uh, lemme have that l-last word, huh?” He lays his hand on top of Goosewing’s trembling fist, squeezing gently. He’s shaking as badly as Goosewing is. 

“I’m so sorry,” Duckula murmurs into his ear. Goosewing’s heart snaps with a visceral crack and rises up into his throat, fit to choke him. A rushing sound fills his head and he almost doesn’t hear what Duckula says next. “But don’t—don’t worry. I’m going to fix this. Everything’s going to be fine, sweetheart.”

Duckula pulls away and Goosewing strains to follow him. His mind is spinning in all directions, and the sensation of Duckula’s breath, the affection in his voice, the name he bestowed on him, only add to his confusion. 

“W-what?” Goosewing stutters, the only words he’s managed so far.  _ What are you going to do?  _

Duckula just winks, his smile resigned in a way Goosewing has never seen before. 

“You do like to take your time, don’t you, lad?” Vlad says. The vampires around them murmur in assent. He prods at Goosewing’s side with a long, bony finger and bile burns in the back of his throat. “Best hurry, though. This one looks as though his heart’s about to give out.” 

Vlad steps back behind Duckula and that’s when he moves. Duckula whirls around and yanks his decorative sword out of its scabbard and swings it in one tremendous arc, bringing the blade down on the ropes binding Goosewing’s left arm and leg. 

“Otto,  _ RUN _ !” Duckula shouts, and kicks over the table Goosewing was sprawled across. 

The vampires on the opposite side leap out of the way as the table and everything beside it is knocked to the floor. Goosewing’s head bounces when it hits the uneven stone, his vision going dark for a few seconds. When he’s able to open his eyes again, his sight blurs worse than before but now isn’t the time to think about his probable concussion. With one hand free, he’s able to retrieve the knife he keeps stashed in his boot 

He manages to cut through the rope around his right wrist before the haughty crane returns to loom over the side of the upturned table. 

“O-positive or not, I won’t be denied a meal!” she snarls. 

On the floor beside him is a lit candelabra, likely knocked over when the table crashed to the ground. The flames are nearly licking the bottom of the heavy curtains that line the room, so he grabs it and throws it in the woman’s face. 

“For your information, I am O-negative!” he snaps. 

She shrieks as the flames catch on her hair and falls away trying frantically to douse them. With her out of the way, he sees that the rest of the vampires aren’t focused on him at all. The dozen or so that remain are all encroaching on Duckula, who swings his pilfered sword around with reckless and desperate abandon. 

“Stay back!” he shouts. “Back, I say!” 

“Traitor,” they hiss. “Freak.” 

“I didn’t want to believe the rumors,” Vlad says, at the front of the group. He shakes his head like a disappointed parent. “A Count Duckula who isn’t a vampire at all; how could such a calamity befall Transylvannia’s most dreadful dynasty? It’s a shame, really. An utter shame. But maybe your 18th reincarnation will be less of a party-pooper.”

“S-stay back,” Duckula says, his voice wavering as Vlad doesn’t pause in his advance. “I-I mean it!” He lunges with the sword, burying it up to the hilt in Vlad’s chest. 

Vlad doesn’t even look down to acknowledge being impaled. Instead he reaches down and picks Duckula up by the throat. 

Goosewing isn’t about to sit by and watch Duckula be killed. With nothing but his own fury and his knife to defend himself with, he leaps to his feet. But he forgets that he never cut through the rope around his right ankle and it snags midstep, sending him crashing back to the floor. As he falls, he grabs the thick curtains in his panic, and they’re so ancient he rips them right off their hooks. 

Sunlight floods the sitting room and the vampires all start screaming. 

The sound is like a dozen sharp knives piercing his brain and Goosewing, victim to a vampire’s thrall, his mind spinning from a concussion, can stand it no longer. When blackness rises up to claim him, Goosewing welcomes silent oblivion. 

  
  
  


“...Goosewing? Can you hear me? Goosewing, I need you to wake up, okay? There are too many buttons here, they’re making me nervous.”

Goosewing wakes feeling as though a bus has run him over, backed up, and run him over again with extreme prejudice. Keeping his eyes closed for a few blessed moments more, he lets out a groan. 

“Oh thank goodness,” a familiar voice says, exhaling heavily in relief. Goosewing hears the sound of someone moving further away followed by the soft clang of metal against metal. That finally gets him to open his eyes. 

The first thing he sees is the aluminum ceiling of his airship, and it’s perhaps the second most reassuring sight he could have woken to. The second is Duckula’s face, grinning at him from the other side of the bars. 

“You’re awake,” he says, his eyes bright. 

“Why am I in mein own holding cell?” Goosewing demands. 

He hadn’t noticed at first, as the metal bench he’d placed in the cell (for the sole purpose of housing creatures such as the one currently sitting outside of it) had been cushioned with a pillow and thick blanket he recognized as having come from his own bed. The realization that Duckula entered his room has Goosewing tamping down a blush like a schoolchild. 

“Oh,” Duckula says, chuckling nervously. “Right. Well, you had a pretty rough go of it back there and I wanted to make sure you were okay. But you have a...let’s say a bad tendency of trying to attack me that I was hoping to avoid.”

Shame courses hot and sharp through Goosewing, nowhere near fading. 

Duckula is sitting cross legged on the floor outside the cell, looking small without his cape. Even the ever-present bags under his eyes seem darker than usual, and though tired his smile is the picture of relief. Duckula must have carried him onto his airship, he realizes on a tide of rising guilt. Carried him, made a bed for him, and watched over him, and what has Goosewing ever done in return? Refrained from killing him?

Goosewing swallows thickly. “I won't attack you, Duckula. I...I promise.”

Duckula beams, and the way it lights up his whole face strikes an almost physical blow against Goosewing’s chest. “That’s a relief to hear,” he says, rising to his feet and fishing the keys to the cell out of his pocket. “I prefer being friends rather than sworn enemies.”

“Friends?” Goosewing repeats, the word foreign on his tongue. While it assuages some of his guilt, it feels oddly...lacking, and isn’t that utterly ungrateful of him. He’s lucky Duckula deigns to be in the same room as him, much less call him friend. 

Duckula enters the cell, his laugh just as dorky as Goosewing remembers from the dinner party. 

“Yeah, friends,” Duckula replies, taking a seat beside him and Goosewing would have stiffened at the close proximity if his body didn’t ache all over. “Not just anyone would slay a roomful of vampires for me.”

Goosewing blinks. “What are you talking about?”

Duckula peers up at him, trading in his smile for a crease in his brow. “You don’t remember? My, eh, loose definition of a family kinda tried to kill us both? How hard did you hit your head?”

Goosewing pushes past the ache in his temples and recalls a shadowed room, jeering voices, ropes biting into his skin. Duckula, looking more terrified than Goosewing has ever seen him, a swinging sword, light flooding a darkened room that immediately became choked with the ash of undead bodies burning. 

He blanches. “You mean that  _ I _ …?”

Duckula’s expression twists wryly. “Congrats, Goosewing. You are now the world’s greatest vampire hunter.” 

“But it was an accident!” Goosewing sputters. 

“Hey, you don’t hear me complaining,” Duckula replies. 

Goosewing finds himself at a loss. He’d never killed a vampire before, and now he’s responsible for the death of a dozen, inadvertently or not. And as monstrous as they’d been, they were Duckula’s family, weren’t they? Could Goosewing’s actions really sit well with Duckula? Knowing that Goosewing has blood on his hands, metaphorical or not, will he want anything to do with him? 

“Hey,” Duckula says again, startling Goosewing when he taps him on the forehead. “I can hear you overthinking things from here.” His smile turns somber. 

“Those people weren’t my family. Maybe they were three or five reincarnations ago, but not now.” He chuckles without humor. “You know, these reunions are only supposed to happen once every century? They came back this year because they heard on the vampire grapevine that I wasn’t, I dunno, drinking virgin’s blood under the full moon or something, and they came to see for themselves. They were going to kill me the second they knew I wasn’t...y’know, a ‘proper’ vampire.” 

Duckula raises his head, and his perpetually tired eyes have softened. “You saved my life by being your annoying vampire-hunting self, Goosewing. So, thank you.” 

Goosewing feels heat rising to his cheeks as Duckula continues watching him with inexplicable fondness in his smile. He doesn’t deserve it, the kindness or the adulation, and the guilt nearly chokes him. 

“P-please, do not thank me,” he stammers, staring down at his hands, curling and uncurling in his lap, to avoid burning under Duckula’s stare. “Not when for years I have tried to kill you.” 

Duckula hums, nudging Goosewing’s shoulder with his own. “Well that’s not exactly true, now is it?” 

“Perhaps you are forgetting all the times I chased you with a hammer and stake?” Goosewing retorts, self-loathing fueling his scowl. 

“No, I remember,” Duckula replies. “I also remember that you’ve had more chances to kill me than I’ve had reincarnations. Yet here I am, remarkably not dead.”

“I have very poor aim.”

Duckula shakes his head with a quiet laugh. “I don’t think that’s it.  _ I _ think you decided that you didn’t want to kill me.”

Goosewing gapes, a faint tremor working its way up his hands. “What—what on Earth could ever make you think that?”

He covers Goosewing’s hand with his own, making Goosewing’s heart stutter. “You look pretty terrified right now, for one,” Duckula murmurs. 

Goosewing wants to shake him off,  _ should  _ shake him off, but only moves his hand so that he can grasp frantically at Duckula’s fingers. “Nevermind what I did or didn’t want,” he bites out. “Why would you risk saving me? After everything I have done to you?” 

He doesn’t think he can ever forget Duckula’s smile, resigned and apologetic, as monsters from his deepest nightmares loom over him, poised to strike. 

Duckula’s laugh is breathy. The hand he reaches up to cup Goosewing’s jaw comes as a shock, and he stiffens, wide-eyed, in the face of it. “Do you really not know?” Duckula asks.

“I…” Goosewing can’t blink, can hardly breathe. It’s that moment in the library all over again and he’s overwhelmed by Duckula’s nearness, except now he knows the feeling of Duckula’s soft palm against his cheek, Duckula’s fingers buried in his unruly feathers.

“I forgave you ages ago,” he says, and his hand drifts down to cradle the back of Goosewing’s neck, tugging gently. Goosewing allows himself to be guided forward, scarcely breathing, as Duckula tucks his head against his shoulder. “I was just waiting for you to come to your senses,” he murmurs against Goosewing’s ear, wrapping his other arm around his waist. 

Goosewing, who has seldom had a hand raised to him in kindness, shudders against Duckula’s hold. He scrabbles to free his own arm and clutch at the back of Duckula’s jacket. 

“I...I do not know if I deserve that,” he whispers. 

Duckula hushes him, rocking their bodies gently. “Course you do. You’re the hero of the hour, remember?”

Goosewing turns his beak, hiding his face against Duckula’s throat. He feels Duckula wince above him and pulls away immediately. 

“Sorry,” he blurts, aghast. Even while seeking comfort, it seems he can’t stop himself from hurting Duckula. “I’m sorry, what did I—”

Duckula doesn’t let him get far, clutching at his elbows. “No, Otto, no, you didn’t do anything wrong. I promise, it wasn’t you.”

“If not me, then who…” 

The empty, hollow space that decades of loneliness have carved out inside Goosewing positively aches upon hearing Duckula call him by his first name. However, at the same time, he notices something far more important. 

Not only is Duckula missing his cloak, neither is he wearing his usual bowtie. His collar is rumpled, exposing a sliver of bare throat, but before Goosewing can get properly flustered over that, he catches a glimpse of purple among the green feathers. 

He reaches out before he can second guess himself, pulling Duckula’s collar flat to expose his throat. Duckula goes still under his touch, a chagrined expression flickering briefly over his face. 

There’s a ring of purple bruises around the base of his throat. 

“Oh, meine liebe,” Goosewing breathes, as his blood runs cold. The endearment slips out so easily he almost doesn’t notice. He’s spared any embarrassment by the certainty that Duckula doesn’t know a lick of German. 

“Good old Uncle Vlad,” Duckula chuckles weakly, looking anywhere but at him. “But, uh, it doesn’t hurt that much anymore.” 

Goosewing was raised in violence. He was taught to solve his problems with stakes and stake-shooting pistols, to see threats where none exist and rage against the threats that do. At that moment, he wants nothing more than to go back and kill Vlad and the rest of the despicable creatures who dared call themselves Duckula’s kin all over again. He wants to make them suffer tenfold what they’ve inflicted on Duckula. 

But then Duckula shivers under Goosewing’s touch, and all thoughts of violence, of inflicting further pain, flee from his mind. Maybe, for once, he can try to be gentle.

Goosewing’s palm is still resting flat on Duckula’s collar bone, holding down the edge of his shirt collar. He’d always been told that vampires were cold to the touch like corpses but Duckula’s body heat, though faint, burns beneath his hand. 

Almost of its own volition, Goosewing’s thumb strokes Duckula’s throat, just above the necklace of bruises. His adam’s apple bobs harshly under Goosewing’s thumb. 

“You called me...Otto, before,” Goosewing murmurs, not risking looking up to meet Duckula’s gaze. 

Duckula sways toward him, forcing Goosewing’s hand to move to the side of his throat, fingertips grazing his jaw. “Is that all I called you?” he replies quietly. 

Goosewing’s throat clicks as he swallows. 

“I didn’t...I didn’t want to presume. It was a stressful situation for the both of us.”

“Right,” Duckula says, toying distractingly with the buttons of Goosewing’s vest. “So, with certain death beckoning, I call you ‘sweetheart’ in a fit of hysteria. That’s your prognosis, doctor?”

“W-well more of a hypothesis, really,” Goosewing stammers, overwhelmed by the way Duckula’s pulse jumps under his palm. Everything about Duckula has always been overwhelming, from the moment he began hunting him, but now his closeness, the softness of his body under Goosewing’s trembling hands, make him feel as though he’s dying and being born anew all at once. 

“Sweetheart,” Duckula says, not a trace of humor in his voice. As softly as Duckula speaks, he might very well have screamed it for how it knocks the very breath out of him. “Allow me to disprove your hypothesis?” he continues. 

“Of course,” Goosewing says, fighting to keep his voice steady. His face feels practically inflamed as Duckula lays his palm flat over his heart. “That is how all good scientific work is done.”

Duckula leans forward, or maybe Goosewing guides him closer with the hand still cupping his jaw. “Can I kiss you?” he asks, painfully earnest, into the barest inches of space between them. 

Goosewing answers by closing the distance himself, doing what he has wanted and denied wanting for years. Clutching Duckula’s face in between his hands, he kisses him carefully, slowly, because he cherishes Duckula yes, but also because he can count the number of men he’s kissed on one hand and he doesn’t fancy making a fool of himself. And though the kiss is nearly chaste, Duckula melts against him, holding Goosewing with a tenderness he can scarcely remember experiencing. 

Duckula sighs as they part, his breath fanning warm over Goosewing’s face, and he opens his eyes with a smile. “How about it, sweetheart?” he says, his arms remaining loosely wrapped around Goosewing’s waist. “Are you ready to admit scientific defeat?”

That startles a bark of a laugh out of Goosewing, the full throaty kind he hasn’t made in years. It’s easy, so devastatingly easy, to tug Duckula back into his arms. “You do not know a thing about science, do you?”

“Not one bit,” Duckula replies happily, tucking his head beneath Goosewing’s chin. A thrill races through him as he thinks of his grandfather and uncles rolling in their graves at him having a vampire so near the defenseless expanse of his throat. 

They hold each other for several long moments, the airship creaking around them. Duckula’s hair is soft under his cheek, his body a solid weight in his arms, and Goosewing thinks he would like to stay this way forever. But he isn’t one to ignore reality for long. 

“So,” he says, hesitantly breaking the silence. 

“So,” Duckula replies against his chest. 

“What do we do now?” Goosewing has always been told how to live his life, given a strict set of rules to follow. He’s adrift now, but having Duckula in his arms provides a reassuring anchor. 

“Now we can do whatever we want,” Duckula says, and isn’t that the most terrifying thing Goosewing has ever heard. 

“I don’t think I know how to do that,” he admits weakly. 

Duckula tilts his head back to look at him properly. “Well, do you want to keep hunting me?”

The thought of raising a hand toward Duckula in violence ever again chills Goosewing to his core. He tightens his embrace. “No,” he vows. “Never.”

Duckula smiles. “There you go then, one thing crossed off the list.”

“What about you?” Goosewing asks. “What...what do you want?”

Duckula pretends to consider the question. “I’ve always wanted to run away from home.”

That startles Goosewing, and he pulls back to look at Duckula more clearly. “Do you mean...leave Castle Duckula?”

Duckula pulls away, and Goosewing lets him go, though he feels colder for it.

“You think you’re the only one with a legacy they hate to live up to?” he asks with a laugh so pained it can hardly be identified as such. “I was supposed to come out the latest horrible blood-sucking vampire in a long line of horrible blood-sucking vampires but instead I’m  _ me _ .” 

He presses his hand flat against his chest, and his gaze burns with conviction. “What I want is to live a normal life around normal people who don’t want me to be something I’m not. I want to put down roots and-and have a family and live in a house and do something meaningful with my life that isn’t wandering around a rotting castle for all of eternity.”

Goosewing is humbled, all at once, by Duckula’s strength. At the same time, he feels doubly guilty for his constant attacks to bring out a monster in Duckula that never existed in the first place, just so he could feel a little better about himself. Unlike him, Duckula has aspirations, he has dreams, ones that will certainly leave him in the dust. 

Despite knowing each other for years, their bond is practically newborn. Goosewing has no claim to him, no right to feel bereft at his impending departure. Chasing the life he so richly deserves will certainly mean losing him, but for the sake of Duckula’s happiness he won’t say a word to the contrary. 

“I think,” Goosewing says slowly, his smile soft, “I think that sounds wonderful. I can take you, if-if you’d like. Anywhere you’d like to go.”

Duckula returns the smile with one of his own. He reaches up, stroking the lines at the corner of Goosewing’s eye with his thumb. 

“Anywhere  _ we’d  _ like to go,” he says. “You didn’t think I’d leave you all alone in this balloon, did you?” 

“What—excuse me,  _ balloon _ ?” He doesn’t have the wherewithal to be properly offended as hope claws its way up his chest. 

“Come with me,” Duckula says, laughing a little, but there’s something utterly serious in his eyes. “We can go anywhere we want to go, do anything we want to do. We can leave our legacies behind. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

That sounds...like a dream come true. What’s stopping them, other than themselves? 

Still, Goosewing has to be sure. 

He looks Duckula in the eye, lets him see the fear reflected back at him. “Are you certain?” Goosewing asks. “You want to...with me? After all I have done?”

“Otto,” Duckula says, and Gooseing knows he’ll never get over the sound of his name on Duckula’s beak, “There’s literally no one else I’d rather run away with.”

Unexpectedly, Goosewing finds blinking hard against the burn of unshed tears. He had to work his throat for several moments before he’s certain he can speak again without his voice breaking. 

“Have you ever seen Paris?” he asks, throwing out the first name he can think of. 

“Paris? Yes,” Duckula replies, kissing Goosewing’s cheek. “But never with you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Now with amazing [fanart](https://based-ducks.tumblr.com/post/611337942763470849/hey-you-yeah-you-read-this-fic-by-mighty-ant/)  
> 


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